Living Room PC’s Are The Next Big Thing

Valve’s Gabe Newell, living room based PC’s are the next step in competing with the video game console and they can be in our front rooms as early as next year.

In an interview with Kotaku, Newell revealed how Valve is looking to work PC’s into becoming more of a family, living room based machine. Noting that the reception to Steams “Big Picture” interface has been “stronger that expected”, the Valve head honcho said that the next step is to get Steam Linux out of its beta mode and to get Big Picture on that OS. Doing so would make it far easier for Valve when developing internal hardware.

Newell also noted how he expects living room based PC’s to start seeing a wider distribution as early as next year, with other companies than Valve adopting them. Valve would have set ups that use computers that will be able to hook up to TV’s allowing for products like Steam to run straight off of the TV.

When asked about living room based PC’s competing with companies such as Sony and Microsoft with consoles, the Valve boss said “I think in general that most customers and most developers are gonna find it that [the PC] is a better environment for them. ‘Cause they won’t have to split the world into thinking about ‘why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?’ So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments.”

Newell also thinks that a lot of different companies may follow suit in releasing these types of living room PC packages. “We’ll do it but we also think other people will as well”.

“Our hardware will be a very controlled environment” said Newell on the topic of Valves hardware being more niche when compared to other pieces of hardware on the market. “If you want more flexibility, you can always buy a more general purpose PC. For people who want a more turnkey solution, that’s what some people are really gonna want for their living room”.

“The nice thing about a PC is a lot of different people can try out different solutions, and customers can find the ones that work best for them.”

When asked about what Valves is currently working on, Newell naturally gave little in the way of specifics aside from that whatever they’re working on will “give us [Valve] some interesting opportunities on the game side”.

George Sinclair is an editor for Analog Addiction, the home of the latest news, reviews and previews. You can find George on Twitter and his blog on IGN. Be sure to follow the OFFICIAL Analog Addiction Twitter as well!